Smartphone owners worldwide downloaded more than 3.8 billion mobile applications in the first six months of 2010, compared to 3.1 billion in all of 2009, according to new data issued by market analysis firm research2guidance. Global smartphone revenues for the first half of 2010 exceed $2.2 billion, surpassing full-year 2009 revenues of $1.7 billion. The study adds that the average premium application price in now $3.60.

“Apple’s competitors like Nokia and BlackBerry started to leverage their global reach and increased the traffic on their app stores,” said research2guidance analyst Egle Mikalajunaite in a prepared statement. “We see this trend continuing in the next several months and years. The next wave of new app stores will be niche stores specializing on e.g. business or mobile health apps.”

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In the agreement,GTX Corp will make available its popular GPS Tracking apps on Samsung’s bada operating system. The GPS Tracking apps will be featured for sale October 2010 in Samsung’s Application Store. Of the 40 million Samsung handsets anticipated to ship between now and mid-2011, 15-20 million will be the new “Scotia” models.

Samsung, the world’s second largest mobile phone manufacturer, launched its own open mobile platform, Samsung bada, in December 2009. Samsung’s mobile 235 million unit ecosystem enables developers to create applications for millions of new bada platform mobile phones. Samsung chose the name “bada”—which means “ocean” in Korean—to convey the limitless variety of potential applications that can be created with bada.

GTX Corp’s announcement follows on an 89% increase in its previous quarter’s revenues in addition to a number of software and hardware deals, including the launch of its consumer social networking portal www.gpstrackingapps.com. The company also posted its GPS Tracking app for the iPad and is launching a GPS camera app this month to its suite of LOCiMOBILE GPS apps.